THE DEEP BLUE SEA. Watford to 23 February.

Watford

THE DEEP BLUE SEA
by Terence Rattigan

Palace Theatre To 23 February 2002
Runs 2hr 30min One interval

TICKETS 01923 225671
Review Timothy Ramsden 6 February

Classic play; fine performances – shame about the set.Some distinguished actors have played Hester Collyer, the middle-aged woman caught between a bored marriage with a devoted husband and an enveloping love for a younger man who finds little use for her, or indeed for himself. Julia Watson's performance is among the finest, catching the cul-de-sac Hester's life has become in an action that begins and, almost, ends in suicide attempts.

What's so terrible for Hester is her understanding of the men in her life. She realises how much her husband thinks he loves her and how significant she remains to his existence. And she's utterly aware of how little she matters to Freddie, and how he has never come down from the clouds-of-glory days of the Battle of Britain. Life in unexciting early fifties England leads him only to drink and, eventually, flight abroad.

There are good performances around Watson's. Philip Madoc gives his character a legal gravity and formal bearing in which deep feelings seem hardly confronted, let alone expressed. There may be a forced element in Paul Warriner's Freddie, but Alex Avery catches the contented compromise with modern life in his friend Jackie.

Zena Walker is luxury casting for the rooming-house landlady. She brings a vivid sense of conscience and sympathy along with the taste for gossip. But however shabby the house is, it seems unfair on her to give it mouldy walls. Surely she has more pride than that. The tenants include a young civil service couple of impeccable respectability who would surely have commented on a building in such a poor state.

Between acts a house-wall and window pane descends and rises. It gives sight of the house's exterior, enforcing its faded gentility; it also conceals moments of the action, which is what we've turned out to see. And were gas meters placed high over doorways, as is this one? How did elderly or arthritic people reach them? Over-assertive designs which underline what's clear in the script do not illumine the play; they patronise the audience. Which is a pity in an otherwise recommendable revival.

Philip Welch: Ben Warwick
Mrs Elton: Zena Walker
Ann Welch: Harri Earthy
Hester Collyer: Julia Watson
Mr Miller: Philip Rham
William Collyer: Philip Madoc
Freddie Page: Paul Warriner
Jackie Jackson: Alex Avery

Director: Lawrence Till
Designer: Matthew Wright
Lighting: Mark Doubleday
Sound: Marcel Gussman

2002-02-14 01:05:31